“The coal industry and its supporters often argue that coal is still a relevant energy source because it’s cheap, and cheap electricity reduces energy poverty. But on Tuesday, Oxfam Australia directed an entire report to Australia’s government, saying that for the one billion people living without electricity, coal is more expensive than renewable energy sources,” according the Think Progress.

“What exactly will the Clean Power Plan mean for Montana? Well, the rule will be flexible, and it’ll give the states the authority to design their own carbon reduction programs. States can choose to increase reliance on renewable energy sources like the wind and sun, bolster energy efficiency, or use a combination of both to reduce statewide carbon emissions,” says NRDC.

“Before sunrise Wednesday morning, Portland kayaktivists and rapellers took to the Willamette River to block the MSV Fennica, a Shell icebreaking vessel that’s been docked in Portland for repairs. The Fennica had planned to ship out today, bound for the Arctic; Shell can’t begin its Arctic drilling until the icebreaker arrives,” reports Grist.

“Of the 1.2 gigawatts of residential solar installed in the U.S. last year, 72 percent was third-party owned (TPO) in the form of leases and PPAs. The remainder was directly owned by the customer, much of it through loans. That’s according to the newest report from GTM Research,U.S. Residential Solar Financing 2015-2020,” says Greentech Media.

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We agree with the conclusion reached by PV Magazine, that although growth in renewable power in the United States is increasingly driven by non-RPS factors, "[t]his does not mean that RPS policies are not important."

Here are some key points from a new study by the Brattle Group for NRDC, entitled "Advancing Past 'Baseload' to a Flexible Grid," which argues that far from being a problem, a higher share of clean energy is actually a great opportunity for a wide variety of reasons.

In sum, the future looks extremely bright for clean energy, and for cleantech more broadly. The question isn't whether these sectors will grow rapidly, but simply how rapidly they'll grow. On that, we'd argue that EIA is far too conservative (or pessimistic, if you prefer), while BNEF is quite possibly too conservative as well, although they appear to be much closer to the mark than EIA's typically bearish-on-renewables, bullish-on-fossil-fuels forecasts.

According to a new report by the Energy Storage Association (ESA) and GTM Research, the U.S. energy storage industry is on fire, having just "deployed 71 MW of energy storage in Q1 2017...up 276% from the 18.9 MW deployed in Q1 2016," and with a lot more growth on the way.

See below for video of Chris Brown of Vestas, keynoting the opening session on day two of WINDPOWER 2017, concluding today in Anaheim, CA. According to Brown, who is completing his tenure as Chair of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the next five years will be the "best five years of your life" for the wind power industry.

But wind and other major cleantech sectors rely on distribution-only or distribution-mostly strategies that leave most of the marketing communications (“marcom”) power of these tools on idle. This year, we looked at why that happens. A few external drivers explain a lot.